Daniel Thompson

Influences can be heard everywhere on this album, from Olivieri's bass, to Zeppelin's strings (borrowed from JPJ) to Bowie's croon (which could also be Lanegan or Iggy’s). This is the making of a myth and as with all myths it depends how you use it. Here it is employed carefully, knowing that what they are working with is the food of the gods. ‘Obscenery’ lets us know immediately that what we are hearing is possibly not meant to be heard (if we are cautious enough not to mess with these forces in the first place). We know what to expect from the first three songs until ‘Time and Place’ that starts off with a riff that sounds like it is running backwards, the way one sometimes doesn’t know what they’re listening to until it’s over. ‘Made to Parade’ is their heaviest song, the heaviest ever, Troy’s chainsaw guitar cutting a swath through the knotted pine an oak into an unexpected beauty. ‘Sicily’ is hard to place at first until the trademark bass pulls us back into current of something slow, ancient and alive beneath our feet. But Queens knows their audience, because the music they make is also for themselves and they aren’t happy with a lot of the stuff out there, constantly testing themselves and us with albums like Songs for the Deaf, Lullabies to Paralyze and Era Vulgaris giving us a break with their two most ‘accessible’ and mainstream albums (not their best), but they are back and not caring ‘What The Peephole Say’.